Think of it as the season finale.
Donald Trump’s faithful are descending on US swing state Michigan, buzzing with excitement for a final chance to see their champion deliver his greatest hits at his traditional last stop before Election Day — and utterly convinced of his inevitable victory.
“If you look at the numbers of people, you look at the rallies, it’s crazy the support that Trump has,” said Mark Perry, 65, who works for a phone company in Indiana.
“If it goes the other way, I think we’re gonna be awful suspicious,” he told AFP outside the 12,000-seat Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, where supporters were braving hours of rain in ponchos and perched on fold-out chairs.
Immigration tops the list of concerns for many, inflation for others, while some are eager to see further restrictions on abortion or an end to youth gender transitions.
But no matter their stance on the issues, they share a deep skepticism that a Kamala Harris win could ever be legitimate, despite the closeness of the polls.
“It would be very hard to accept,” said Jacob Smith, 41, an HVAC technician from the area, as his wife Danielle chimed in, expressing concerns she’d heard about supposed irregularities with ballot machines in Michigan.
Trump has ramped up claims of election fraud ever since his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden and ahead of this year’s vote, though no evidence of widespread fraud has come to light.
Still, an NPR poll last month found 88 percent of voters who support the former president are concerned there will be fraud, compared to 29 percent who support the Democratic nominee. Most voters also say Harris would concede and Trump wouldn’t if defeated, according to a Pew Research survey.
Lines began forming outside the venue early in the morning, though doors were not set to open until after 6:30 pm, with the former president expected to address the crowd late into the night.
Grand Rapids was Trump’s grand finale in 2016, when he clinched victory — and again in 2020, when he fell short — but his affection for Michigan’s second city hasn’t wavered.
– Witnessing history –
For Jeff Dickerson, a 70-year-old handyman from Bonita Springs, Florida, this marked his eighth time at a Trump event — including the January 6, 2021, demonstration against certifying Biden’s election win.
“I’m just a die-hard Trump supporter,” he said, listing the flow of undocumented migrants along the southern US border as his top concern. “I like everything that he’s done.”
Dickerson had come with his nephew, 48-year-old psychiatrist Nigel Mahabir, who marveled at the historic nature of the moment — the final stop on the Trump train on the eve of Election Day.
“This feels like a 1776 moment,” he said, drawing a comparison to the Declaration of Independence.
“If we get this right, and we get Trump in the White House, he’s bringing Vance, he’s bringing Elon Musk, he’s bringing RFK, he’s bringing Tulsi — that’s Team America.”
A major concern for Mahabir is “the movement for introducing kids at a young age to gender reassignment procedure” and its impact on the “mental health of our children.”
That worry was shared by Ruth McDowell, a 65-year-old administrative assistant at a local college.
“They want kids to be allowed to say what they want for their bodies when they don’t even know what they’re really doing,” she told AFP, expressing dismay for her grandchildren’s future in the event of a Harris win.
But Chuck Lu, a Chinese immigrant and small business owner from Chicago who said this was his third Trump event, said he didn’t think Harris could win fairly.
“If, God forbid, she becomes president, she is someone installed, not elected.”
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